The communication and management of information is core to the viability of companies. Corporate entities have long recognized the benefits of communicating information to and receiving feedback from customers and employees, for example. Web sites are emerging as the mechanism of choice for cost effectively communicating with large numbers of individuals. For example, corporate enterprise systems (or intranets) provide a way to pass information to employees about benefits, software updates, and health information. Corporations can provide private site access to preferred customers related to new products and services, accounts, etc. Hospitals now provide ways for patients to receive test results via web sites with secure login. Banks provide web site login for secure transactions, and so on. In other words, there are a large number of web sites for the dissemination of all types of information and user interaction. An equally enormous task then becomes maintaining and updating web site documents, content, and features.
Conventional authoring tools typically allow for the creation and posting of web documents to the intended web sites with manual uploading as part of the process. However, with the ever-increasing number of web sites and the corresponding larger number of web documents and content, this can become a daunting management task.
Authoring can include the creation of multiple document versions of different documents. For example, where two versions are utilized, these document versions can be referred to as checked-in and checked-out, published and unpublished, major and minor, etc. Maintaining a web site means that while one version of a document is posted for viewing, other new and updated documents may need to be in the pipeline for approval and eventual posting. While conventional products exist for making web pages and documents accessible, web site management still requires an increasing outlay of funds and resources to maintain web sites.